Alameda Poet Paul Corman-Roberts
Editor's note: Paul Corman-Roberts was scheduled to be the featured poet at April's Third Thursday Poetry. We are blessed with the arts in all forms: novels, biographies, dramas, non-fictional and short stories, films, music, television, graphic art, sculpture and more. Poetry, too, is a vital part of our celebrated arts. With that in mind we're pleased to include Blake More's profile of Mr. Corman-Roberts. He won't appear in person in April, but he's an artist we should know.
On Thursday, April 16, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series will feature Alameda poet Paul Corman-Rogerts. The reading will take place at the Arena Market cafe and will begin with live improv jazz and an open mic with jazz improv; the reading will conclude with more live improv jazz.
Paul Corman-Roberts 2nd full length collection of Bone Moon Palace will be released by Nomadic Press in the Fall of 2020. Previous collections include his full length debut The Abomunauts Are Coming To Piss On Your Lawn (Howling Dog Press, 2006) and the chapbook collections NeoCommuter (Tainted Coffee Press, 2009) 19th Street Station (Full of Crow Chap Series, 2011) Notes From An Orgy (Paper Press, 2014) and We Shoot Typewriters (Nomadic Press, 2015.) His poem “Sausalito” won the Out of Our Magazine poetry contest in 2010 and his short story “The Deathbed Confession of Christopher Walken” placed 2nd in subTerrain Magazine’s national fiction contest in Canada. Individual work has appeared The Rumpus, Sparkle & Blink, Brave New Word, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Otis Literary Review, Buddy, Up The Staircase, and many others. He has also served as an editor for online magazines Cherry Bleeds, Full of Crow and Red Fez where he still serves as an advisory member.
Corman-Roberts received a double Masters degree (MA/MFA) in Poetics from the New College of California in 2003. In 2012, Corman-Roberts founded Oakland's Beast Crawl Literary Festival which he is currently in the process of reviving after a two-year hiatus. He was also the producer and host of the literary series Passages on the Lake and co-host/co-founder of Babar in Exile, also based out of Oakland. He has also performed in festivals all throughout the United States.
He currently teaches workshops for the Older Writer’s Lab in conjunction with the San Francisco Public Library as well as the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. He also works as a substitute of the Oakland Unified School District while living in exile on the forlorn island of Alameda while remaining actively and proudly involved in raising his daughter Hannah, a sixteen-year old future theater major.
Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz is supported by The Third Thursday Poetry Group, many anonymous donors, and Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.
